The plan to host Ukrainian refugees currently being organized by the Italian government "still has many points to be clarified regarding its management," ActionAid Italia said on Thursday, March 10.

The Italian chapter of the rights organization that fights poverty and injustice, together with the platform Openpolis, is monitoring hosting centers for refugees and asylum seekers across the country.

For years, ActionAid has denounced "scarce transparency and problems of the extraordinary network of CAS" reception centers, in particular following the so-called security decrees approved between 2018 and 2020 when League leader Matteo Salvini was Italy's interior minister.

Fewer CAS centers and integration services following security decrees

According to the monitoring report carried out over this period, the security decrees on average cut by 25% the daily cost per person in the CAS hosting system, with fewer integration services offered to guests, including linguistic and cultural mediation, legal and psychological assistance, said ActionAid.

Incentives granted to for-profit organizations to manage the centers led to a lower level of expertise, according to the rights group.

In addition, the shutdown of many facilities led to larger centers hosting a higher number of people, the report noted.

Closures in fact affected the smallest centers, mainly apartments and facilities hosting less than 50 people. Over 21,000 places were lost in small centers between 2018 and 2020, the report said.

In the province of Milan, an area with the three largest centers (up to 300 guests) present in Italy, the cost of a guest per day was cut by 45%.

Out of the 220 CAS centers active in 2018, at the end of 2020 only 37 were left in Milan.

In the province of Naples, instead, daily costs were cut by 22% and 2,060 CAS facilities were open as of December 31, 2020 against 3,759 in 2018.

Effort on municipalities, small centers - CAS network inadequate

Fabrizio Coresi, a migration expert at ActionAid Italia, said that, "despite the need to activate extraordinary facilities in a phase of emergency, it is necessary to valorize the system of centers SAI (hosting system for integration), under the responsibility of municipalities. Due to the huge flow of people, mainly women with children who are fleeing war and have already arrived in Italy, the permanence in CAS" centers must be "temporary", like the centers, he said.

Coresi called for the "expansion of the SAI system and of forms of micro-reception," or small housing units across a territory "with adequate services and standards to safeguard the rights and dignity of those who are hosted", as well as adequate CAS centers.